During 1994, the film-maker Lee Tamahori delivered one of the biggest first films of the decade, operating at full capacity with the heartbreaking social-realist melodrama Once Were Warriors. This family represent a blue-collar indigenous family in South Auckland: the actor plays the drinking, fighting, bragging dominant benefit recipient the father, who returns from drinking in the pub with his pathetic sycophant mates to terrorise and assault his wife Beth, portrayed by Rena Owen, and their five children. He shows no concern to the future of his two elder sons who have fallen into gang life and illegal activities, including his gentle daughter Grace, who has talent as a writer. A son receives gang tattoos; another is sent to a juvenile reformatory where he is partly educated in the ways of Maori culture – the haka and the traditional weapon – and learns self-worth and pride. But back at Jake’s chaotic house, Grace is raped by a repulsive acquaintance “Uncle Bully”; disaster follows, and the mother passionately confronts the despicable Jake: “Our ancestors once were warriors, but unlike you, they, they were people with mana, dignity; people with spirit …”
Emotional Violence and Confident Direction
Tamahori unleashed with such intense drama, and landed sledgehammer punches with bar sequences, domestic moments and gang initiation rituals, handling them with confidence and verve. He crafted a bold, heartfelt film with a very 90s touch of edginess. It succeeded with viewers and critics, and – whether positive or negative – strongly influenced industry executives in Hollywood who could see how Tamahori could apply that dynamism and flair to mainstream genre material.
Hollywood Career and Varied Projects
In America, the director made the noir thriller Mulholland Falls, about violent LAPD cops who ignore protocol, and then a script by Mamet survival thriller The Bear with Anthony Hopkins and his co-star as characters who trek through the wilderness after a plane crash. (This film gained cult status when its producer he wrote humorously about the turbulent production of filming with an animal actor in his witty Hollywood book What Just Happened?) Along Came a Spider was a serviceable thriller, and he had another payday directing the sequel in the XXX series XXX State of the Union.
007 Movie and Professional Changes
But the high point, or perhaps the nadir, of his Hollywood career was directing the Bond movie Die Another Day in 2002, with the star; it was the installment mocked for having the worst gadget in 007 history – a cloaked vehicle. Why would anyone need such a car, audiences wondered? This car which makes it very hard to recall its parking spot.
Subsequent Projects and Return
Following this, the director found renewed creativity. The The Devil’s Double in 2011 featured the actor in dual parts of Saddam Hussein’s hideous son Uday and also Uday’s decoy double, employed to protect the young tyrant-princeling from attack or kidnapping: this was a punchy, watchable film which avoided the usual double tropes. And in later years, he returned to the theme of indigenous traditions, making The Convert in 2023, collaborating with writer Shane Danielsen. He proved to be an exceptional director – but it remained his debut, the emotional Once Were Warriors, that was his greatest work.
